


Calculated Risks

by yikesola



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2015 - Freeform, Established Relationship, M/M, sam the surfer - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23497363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: They should have no trouble making their flight to LA. Dan wants to lean over and tell Phil that he can relax now, but knows full well that telling a decidedly unrelaxed person to just calm down is like throwing water on a kitchen fire— well meant, but the water reacts with the oil and the flames just rise and soon the whole house burns down.A fic about distance and frustration.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 12
Kudos: 96





	Calculated Risks

Dan is sure he packed his DS charger. Pretty sure… rather sure… it’s too late to check now. He’ll just have to be anxious about it until they actually get to the airport as his bag is in the back of the car. Worst case scenario, he’ll just steal Phil’s; assuming of course that Phil doesn’t intend to just steal his. 

They’re making fine time even in the London traffic. They should have no trouble making their flight to LA despite Phil frowning as Dan upended his closet while packing last-minute. He wants to lean over and tell Phil that he can relax now, but knows full well that telling a decidedly unrelaxed person to just calm down is like throwing water on a kitchen fire— well meant, but the water reacts with the oil and the flames just rise and soon the whole house burns down. 

So instead he double-checks that the driver’s focus is on the road, and slips his hand over to Phil’s knee. He gives it a squeeze then brings his hand back to his own lap. He sees Phil’s shoulders lower in his peripheral vision, only slightly. But something. 

*

They’re lucky with the line checking their bags, they’re lucky with the line through airport security. They’re sat at their gate waiting for the flight attendants to announce boarding and Phil has finally started to accept that they really are going to get to LA. He’s munching on a bag of crisps he paid way too much for in the sundries shop and Dan is scrolling through his phone. 

He hears the familiar voice break through his tunnelled concentration on his Twitter timeline. “Phil? Dan? Oh my god, what’re the odds!” 

Dan looks up to see a wide white smile, a fit Australian surfer who has absolutely no idea the spiral he’s just sent Dan’s stomach on. 

“Sam!” Phil smiles and stands and pulls the near-stranger into a hug. Dan does the same, and thankfully because Sam doesn’t actually know them he doesn’t seem to notice how wooden Dan’s smile is. “What’s this now, the… third time we’re bumping into each other?” 

Dan nods. “Yeah, third,” he says. 

“Well, third time’s the charm then,” Sam smiles impossibly wider. “D’you have any time? Wanna grab a bite? I have an hour left til boarding.” 

Phil is already grabbing his backpack. For someone who’s been freaked out about missing the flight since they woke up this morning, Dan thinks Phil maybe agreed a little quickly. “We have time, yeah Dan?” 

Dan nods again. He keeps the wooden smile on his face until the three of them are sat in the airport’s closest approximation to a pub. Sam orders a dark amber beer and drinks half of it in one gulp when it arrives. Dan sticks to water; he’s trying to drink more water lately. His new therapist keeps urging that point, he needs to hydrate. Phil orders a mimosa even though it’s midday, and Dan is ready to tease him about it, but Sam beats him to the punch. 

“Ooh, fancy Sunday brunch we’re having, Mr. Mimosa,” he says, and his stupidly charming Australian accent washes out any sting Dan might’ve tried to assign the comment. But there was no sting, Dan knows. Sam, more infuriating perhaps than his surfing or his accent or his looks, is so fucking nice. 

Sam orders fish and chips, and Phil orders a burger, and Dan gets the cheesiest pasta dish he can find on the menu. For no other reason than the keen understanding that Phil won’t be kissing him for about ten hours yet, so it doesn’t matter if he eats cheese anyway. 

While they wait for the food, they catch up as best as friendly almost-strangers can. Dan and Phil try to explain Vidcon to him— “It’s like, a conference for online content creators” “But if it’s online, why are you flying all the way to LA?” “Well… this part’s irl”— and they’re reminded once more that even people their own age don’t always spend as much time on the internet as they do. Sam says he’s heading home to his fiancé. He pulls up her Instagram and she’s beautiful. Tall and tanned and looking as much like a model as Sam does. The wedding is in three months. It’ll be on the beach, of course. Sam accepts their congratulations with a bashful sort of smile Dan has never seen on him, and it’s yet another tally in the list of reasons he shouldn’t be as irritated by Sam’s existence as he is. 

“Either of you two gonna settle down any time soon?” Sam asks. Dan feels the foot of space between him and Phil is as wide as a canyon. 

Phil lets out a nervous, polite laugh. “You been talking to my mum?” he jokes. 

“Our plates are a little too full for dating,” Dan lies. If Sam were to ask for examples, he’d have plenty of them: their main channels, the gaming channel, the radio show, the book, the tour… if either he or Phil were trying to be set up with anyone, it’d be hard to find any time to actually make that happen. Not that either of them has been looking for years. And not that Sam has any idea of that despite appearing in their lives back at the very beginning of Dan and Phil understanding just how big and arching what they have together is. 

But, Sam doesn’t ask for examples. He just shakes his head and dips a chip into his tartar sauce and goes on about how great engaged life is. Dan wonders if he can get away with pressing his thigh against Phil’s under the table. He decides not to risk it. 

*

Dan orders a red wine on the plane when the drink cart rolls through for the first time. He was good, he figures, having water at lunch. He’s earned this. 

He didn’t actually pack his DS charger. He had checked his backpack thoroughly after they waved goodbye to Sam, and though he found the charger for his phone and his laptop and his iPad (the latter of which he didn’t even bring on this trip) there was no Nintendo charger in sight. And he felt too shitty to bother Phil about borrowing his, so he’s got about nine hours left in the air and about 40% battery life left to contend with. 

The wine should help, he thinks. Should calm him down, maybe help him sleep. If he’s sleeping he can’t be draining his limited battery— DS or his own human battery. 

“It’s crazy we ran into Sam again,” Phil says as he taps through the touch screen on the seat in front of him, still undecided on a movie to watch. It’s not the first time he’s said this. Dan gives the same grunt he had the first two times. He’s not in the mood to have another debate about fate and coincidences and the wide, wide universe’s randomness. 

He knows he’s being unfair. He can feel it in the twist of his gut that has nothing to do with the occasional turbulence the plane flies through. He’s going to be unfair anyways; like the wine, he figures he’s earned it. 

*

Dan’s neck hurts and his legs hurt and he has a handful of confused seconds before he realises why: he’s fallen asleep, and though it’s hard to find a good position to sleep in a plane seat as is, he managed to fall asleep in a pretty shitty one. He’s bent slightly with the armrest digging into his side and his legs wedged between the wall and the seat in front of him. He starts to wiggle to try to get a little more comfortable, when the arm around him tightens. 

It’s Phil’s arm, wrapped around him like it always is when they’re home. 

And like it absolutely never is when they’re in public. 

He can feel his sweaty fringe sticking to his forehead. He’s going to be sporting a curly mop of hair when they step off the plane to be surrounded by unfairly beautiful Californians. That does nothing for his mood, which is still sour despite the nap. 

What he thinks is most unfair is that he _knows_ why his mood is sour and he _knows_ that it’s stupid. But he still feels it. Just a million little things that combined with him sleeping like shit the night before they left and the stress of international travel and the rigidity which days and days of being _on_ is going to require. 

It’s started already. It started in the car ride to the airport when he was afraid to touch Phil for half a second. It started when he had his guard up around Sam even though the few exchanges he’s ever had with Sam have given him no reason but to think he’s a perfectly nice guy. It’s going to keep building and building until he and Phil are safely back home, in their flat, door shut from the rest of the world and they can just be themselves. 

So it’s stupid but there’s nothing to be done. He just needs to get over it. He and Phil are well-practised at hiding in plain sight, at not standing any nearer than they need to, at brushing past questions they can’t or won’t answer. 

In the meantime, he turns his head and breathes in the scent of home on Phil’s hoodie. He feels Phil’s head droop a little lower onto his. 

*

When Dan wakes up a second time, the sun is shining through the raised shade of his window. He reaches forward and closes it, and the movement seems to be enough to wake Phil as well. Phil moves the arm from around Dan’s waist to bring both hands to his eyes and rub with little fists. 

Dan immediately wants Phil’s arm back around him. He wants that closeness, that comfort, even that little thrill that felt like they were getting away with something because it was such an intimate way for them to be sitting even in public. The little thrill that reminds him of making out with Phil in his Wokingham bedroom knowing his parents were right downstairs, or slapping Phil’s ass in an empty elevator at the BBC as they make their way in to start the radio show. A little thrill he craves; calculated risks. 

The kind of risks that keep him from doing something truly self-destructive. Like coming out to spite someone despite all the therapy he’s had which tells him not to do so until he’s ready. 

He doesn’t even think he’d be brave enough or stupid enough to do it out of spite, but sometimes someone will make a comment— like Sam asking if either of them are ready to settle down— and Dan will feel the same sort of fire-hot twist in his gut he attributes to jealousy as he feels the urge to say something definitive and snappy that will shut everyone up. That will leave nothing open to interpretation. 

Even though he thrives on open to interpretation, on plausible deniability, on desperately clawing onto whatever opportunity for control he and Phil have. 

“Time is it?” Phil asks through a yawn. 

Dan sits up a little straighter and taps at the screen on the seat in front of him a few times. “We land in four hours,” he says. 

Phil pulls his charging DS from the pouch in the seat in front of him where he must’ve stashed it after Dan fell asleep. Dan’s own DS died hours ago. Phil unplugs his and looks like he’s about to start settling in for some serious _Animal Crossing_ time. 

“Can I borrow that?” he asks Phil, pointing to the cord still plugged in. 

Phil reaches and hands the cord over. Doesn’t tease Dan for not bringing his. Doesn’t even seem surprised that Dan had asked. 

Dan plugs in his DS and waits for it to come back to life. He wonders if Phil had picked up on the bad mood that is slowly, very slowly, slipping. He stares at Phil’s face long enough that Phil turns towards him and gives a sleepy, deeply sincere smile. Then Dan knows he would’ve been surprised if Phil hadn’t picked up on his mood. Knows that’s probably half the reason Phil was stressed most of the morning, not just the possibility of missing their flight which exists until one is physically sat in their seat. Knows that’s why Phil is quiet, giving Dan space, even if he physically can’t right now. 

Sometimes Phil is so good it makes Dan feel like he must be the most selfish person in the world. 

He also knows that’s not the kind of thought he’s supposed to let bounce around his brain, as it only serves to make him feel worse. Especially as it isn’t true and he knows it. Phil can also be selfish. Dan can also be good. 

He leans to the side again and rests his head on Phil. He opens _Pokemon_ and feels Phil’s arm wrap around him again, shuffling slightly so they can both reach their own little screens. It’s almost a cuddle. A half-cuddle. A hell of a loud cuddle for technically being where others could see them, and somehow allowed because surely even closeted people have a right to get comfortable on cramped plane seats.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/614579578471694336/calculated-risks) !


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